Pineapple: A Dissection

Happy Father's Day! I wish I could be home and celebrating with my dad, but I'll be back soon enough. My dad is an excellent cook - he tends to stick to grilling while my mom does the baking and side preparation, but everything he makes is delicious. :) He's also a really adventurous eater like me, so we usually go and try ethnic food places together. We have similar tastes in a lot of things, and food is one of them!

My dad has taught me some very valuable skills over the years, like how to sautee mushrooms and how to make lemon icebox pie. One of the most oft-used skills I have to thank him for, though, is slicing a pineapple. I LOVE pineapple - it's my favorite fruit. I like it because it's sweet without being really tart, and it's packed with flavor (unlike melons, which I take issue with. I know, my family doesn't understand, either). Pineapples usually look really intimidating and spiky, so it seems easier to just buy pre-sliced containers to enjoy. Really, though, it's much better to slice your own. Buying a pineapple whole will give you twice the pineapple for half the price, and then you can ensure it's really really ripe. Delicious!

So, what do you need for this project? Just a pineapple, a large knife (the one you'd normally use to chop vegetables), a cutting board, and some tupperware to store it in. As far as the pineapple is concerned, you want to make sure it's really fresh. Look for pineapples that are mostly yellow! Green ones are underripe, and even if you give it a few days to ripen at home it will usually skip yellow and just turn brown. If you're not sure if you have a ripe pineapple, smell it. It should smell really fruity and sweet when ripe.

Next, lay the pineapple on its side and use your knife to cut off the top and bottom of the pineapple. Looks can be deceiving, but the pineapple is really not too hard to cut through - the skin is not tough at all. 

Set your pineapple back on its bottom (or top if the cut is straighter that way), and start slicing off the rest of the skin. You can cut off 2-inch sections at a time, and just cut about 1/4 inch into the pineapple and it should take off the outer layer. Do this all the way around the pineapple. If it's a really close shave, you may end up with brown "pores" left. Those are really tough, so be sure to shave all of those off!

So, now the hardest part is done! All that's left is to cut out the core - it's really kind of woody and chewy and has very little flavor so you want to remove it. There are such things as pineapple corers, but you don't need anything so fancy. Just slice all the way through your pineapple and work with a half at a time to make it easier on yourself.

Slice each half into wedges - I like mine to be about 1" in thickness at the widest, and I usually get 5-6 wedges out of each half. Stand the wedge up on its side, and then slice out the bit of core at the tip. It's generally lighter in color than the rest of the fruit, and if you just take 1/2" off of the tip you should get it all! This will slice really easily because the fruit is very soft.

Now, just slice the remaining wedge into bite-sized pieces and store! Fresh pineapple will keep in the fridge for about a week, maybe a little longer depending on how ripe your fruit is. And you're done! It only takes about 10 minutes and you get a ton of pineapple out of it!

What can you do with it, you ask? Lots! You can bake them into desserts or mix them into fruit salads or cook/grill them with a little bit of brown sugar for a piece of heaven. Or, you could do what I do and just eat it all fresh! 

Thanks for reading and happy cooking!